It's a Great Life: The miracle of modern medicine and time continue to march on

ANNE HEYMENStaff Writer

Published Sunday, May 02, 2004

Remember the days when, if you had a headache, you took an aspirin?

It wasn't a "buffered aspirin." It didn't have added ingredients to perform magic, to give you extra sensory vision or anything like that.

It was just a plain old aspirin, and probably one company made all the aspirins in the world.

It doesn't work that way now.

Now if you have a headache, you can choose from an army of products that will make your head spin and give you a worse headache than the one you had in first place.

And don't even talk about other medical problems.

As I watch television during what I like to call the "hit or miss" season -- it's a "hit or miss" whether the show will be a new one or a repeat -- I've been struck by the ads for all the miracle drugs.

You can cure everything from allergies to things which they tell you'll feel better if you take the medication but they don't tell you what problem it cures.

They just show people running through fields of flowers and jumping up and down and then say: Ask your doctor about Cure-All. It cures all!"

"All what?" is what I want to know.

And speaking of jumping up and down, that's what some of the men do in one commercial about something we can't talk about here. But at least it's a better commercial than the one where the man and woman look at each other lovingly and the announcer says: "You'll be ready when the time is right."

That's more information than I really want to know.

But what really gets to me is, after all the wonders of today's modern medicine and you watch women and children running through fields of flowers and throwing themselves down in the midst of rag weed -- because, for example, they no longer need to worry about allergies -- then comes the zinger.

But it's said so fast you'd need to hire a court reporter to get it all down.

It's something like: "Take Wonder of It All for all your medical problems associated with allergies and feel relief in minutes, not years.

"Side effects include dizziness, nausea, constipation, some people have been known to retreat to the bomb shelters their families built in the 1950s, never to be heard from again. And you should not take Wonder of It All if you suffer from dizziness, nausea, constipation, if you're already anti-social, have liver problems, are pregnant, have a bad attitude or were born in a month with an R in it."

No wait, that used to be you can't eat oysters in a month without an R in it, isn't that what it is?

"Some people," the disclaimer continues, "have been known to die after taking Wonder of It All, but the rate is just 30 percent.

"So, if you are suffering from a small headache, ask your doctor about Wonder of It All. Your headache will be gone, gone, gone. Of course you'll probably become depressed, but hey, that's modern medicine."

And speaking of modern medicine, I couldn't believe my eyes the other day.

In a news article, I learned that not only can an individual change the way he or she looks with plastic surgery, a little suction here and there -- and heaven knows what else -- time and the possibility of creating a whole new being marches on.

Now you can have your voice changed.

No, I mean it.

An article in the paper a couple of weeks ago noted that formerly old people -- after they had things nipped, tucked and sucked -- looked too young to have quivery voices.

So, now they can have that changed, too.

Isn't life wonderful.

You can get a complete overhaul of the body -- and I mean complete, right down to changing your voice -- and then you decide you need a pill for an allergy or one of those mystery problems they tell you on TV that they can cure, but don't tell you why you should take it. They tell you to see your doctor to get a prescription.

So you do. You show up and say something like: "Doctor, I really need this drug to cure what ever it cures. I'm sure I have the disease it won't advertise on TV, but tell you it can eliminate."

"I'm sorry" he replies "Who are you? I don't recognize you. I don't believe we've ever met before. I have a patient by the same name as yours, but you don't look -- or sound -- like the person I've been treating for years."